


our fearful trip is done

by gracelinne



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, You know what just read it, also a pre-camera selfie, also van gogh and butter chicken and dog tags, in which bucky is fucked up but probably not as fucked up as he could be, non-civil war compliant, self-indulgent bullshit, they are in latin but they are definitely funeral rites, warning there are definitely funeral rites in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:35:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6920257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelinne/pseuds/gracelinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and death of Bucky Barnes is, in retrospect, really just the life and protection of Steve Rogers. The Winter Soldier remembers, sort of, and Bucky tries not to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our fearful trip is done

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, because is that not the most appropriate poem ever. I hate these stupid boys with their stupid pining feelings and their genetically engineered angst. Also, fuck canon, apparently.

Bucky is falling, and he loves Steve Rogers.

There’s a howling sound in his ears. He stopped screaming a long time ago, and the silence is almost worse, but he can’t make a sound. His hand is outstretched, as if to grab Steve’s.

He knows what’s going to happen. He is going to die.

He has one last moment, one more blinding flash of snow and cloudy sky, and he screws his eyes shut and remembers nights in Steve’s old apartment when they were young, both curled up in Steve’s bed and facing each other, whispering through the dark about their plans for the future. He remembers Steve’s eyes watching him, bleached of their color by the moon, and Steve telling him they were gonna live together forever, ‘cause they’re best friends and they’ll take care of each other, right Buck?

He hits the ground. It hurts more than he expected it to. He’d hoped that would be it. His left arm isn’t working. He blacks out.

Bucky remembers Steve’s mother’s funeral. It had been chilly, a desolate November day. Steve’s coat wasn’t warm enough. It had holes in the elbows and collar, which Sarah had promised she’d patch, and then she got sick. Steve had been shivering, and Bucky remembered wanting nothing more than to just hand over his own coat.

Bucky had been with Steve the whole time, sitting in the same pew for the service and standing by him at the gravesite. Steve had grabbed Bucky’s left hand as he knelt to drop a handful of dirt on his mother’s coffin. Bucky had set his jaw and looked around, daring anyone to say anything about it. No one did.

Steve hadn’t let go of Bucky’s hand for the rest of the day.

His skin is freezing. Frost creeps up his legs. He still can’t move his left arm. He swallows hard, throat clicking from disuse and dryness, and tries to call for help, but all that comes out is a hoarse croak. He grits his teeth and tries again.

 _“Hello?”_ he calls, throat sore. He hurts all over. The silence in the snowy valley is oppressive and heavy, throbbing in his ears. It takes effort, but he hauls himself to a sitting position. He yells again; it echoes dully against the snow. A prickle of heat behind his eyes startles him and he clenches his teeth, frustrated, using his right hand to swipe away the angry tear. He stands unsteadily, bracing himself on the side of the chasm. He looks down at his left arm and has to force himself not to vomit -- it’s at an awkward angle, the skin torn open, blood coursing sluggishly over his skin. The sleeve of his coat is soaked and stiff.

He hopes the blood hasn’t reached his left inside pocket -- he checks, runs his fingers across the soft, worn fold of paper he knows so well. It feels dry, thank God, and he breathes a sigh of relief. There’s an old metal cigarette case in another of his pockets -- it’s empty, used only to provide cigarettes for others; Bucky doesn’t smoke, never has, mostly due to Steve’s asthma. His mouth twists as he fumbles the cold case out of his coat and into the snow, popping it open and pulling the folded paper from the inside pocket. The seams are softened from constant folding and refolding, and he flips it open to look it over.

The pencil marks are faded slightly, charcoal melting into creamy paper. It’s a portrait, the edge jagged, torn from a journal. The lines are haphazard, like Steve hadn’t put too much effort into it.

“I don’t do self-portraits,” Steve had said, “just other people.” Bucky had asked again to an exasperated denial, but later, he’d found a loose sketch of a sheepish Steve, folded carefully and set on his cot. It’s been in his coat since.

Bucky looks at it for a moment longer, tracing the lines of the face he knows so well, and folds the paper again, slipping it into the cigarette case, which he closes and puts back in his pocket.

“God damn it, Rogers,” Bucky mutters, gritting his teeth as his arm throbs. He starts moving -- he doesn’t know where, but anywhere’s gotta be better than the blood-soaked patch of snow behind him. He’s slow -- he keeps staggering, he’s lightheaded, and it hurts to blink, but he keeps going.

It doesn’t take long for him to tire, and when he stumbles over a frozen mound, he hits the snow face-first and can’t make himself get up again, barely manages to turn over onto his back. He’s so exhausted, is the thing, and his arm hurts, and it would be so much _easier_ to close his eyes and sink into the pulsing darkness that’s begun at the edges of his vision.

Once, when Steve had been sick and couldn’t get out of bed, Bucky had brought him a box of paper and charcoal pencils. Steve had sniffled and sat up in bed and sketched while Bucky read books out loud. Mostly science fiction stuff -- aliens and robots. Some of it was good, and some of it was so bad Steve laughed until he cried. Bucky had laughed because Steve was laughing, and he wanted so badly for it to continue forever.

Later, with Bucky sitting against the headboard with a book in his hands, Steve had curled up next to him, pillowing his face on Bucky’s chest, under his arm. They were lucky to be in such an isolated room -- the position was too intimate to be public, Bucky thought. Steve’s hands had been hot and dry from his fever, and where they touched he left trails of fire that burned Bucky through his clothes. They had fallen asleep that way, curled together, the book dropping from Bucky’s limp hand.

Bucky remembers the soft, welcome wash of darkness, can almost feel Steve’s hands fisted in his shirt. He remembers wishing, wanting.

He fades out of consciousness. It comes back in flashes -- a tall figure hefting an axe; the sensation of being dragged through snow; the sight of his arm, now missing, trailing blood.

Later, he remembers burning. All-consuming heat, burning his skin, burning through his veins, burning him up and leaving his bones in ash.

He remembers screaming.

He remembers a blaze of gold and red and blue, a flash of a smile, laughter that trips over itself. He doesn’t remember a name, only colors and sounds.

He remembers nothing but pain and cold and orders.

 

The soldier prowls. His mission is easy; an in-and-out assassination of a corrupt politician. He waits, crouched on the roof of a nearby building. He flexes his left hand, remembering the bone-deep chill of snow on an arm flayed open. Wind bites across his skin. The politician isn’t home yet. There’s a bone-deep unease shivering through the soldier, a feeling of wrongness that pervades the air around him. He stands, restless, paces the perimeter of the roof. Two alleys surround the building; he checks both of them, like there’s something specific to look for. His eyes catch on a cluster of garbage cans -- he can almost hear them clatter, as if someone has been shoved into them. The soldier shakes his head and doesn’t allow himself to look at them again.

Headlights flash across the soldier’s vantage point and he drops from the roof, landing silently beside the garbage cans. The man’s bedroom is the third window up and second to the right, and that is where the soldier enters, edging the frame up and sliding through. He stands, silent and lethal, in the shadowed corner of the man’s bedroom. When the man enters, dressed only in silk pajama pants, the soldier steps forward.

His knife slides into the man’s neck like butter. The man’s eyes go wide and, as the soldier pulls the knife from his carotid artery, blood rushes to the surface, falling to stain his sheets. He drops his mug of tea. It shatters, washing over the soldier’s feet. It smells like chamomile.

The soldier jolts, his head full of the scent of chamomile and a strange, tripping laugh, a flash of a smiling mouth.

He shakes his head. His mission is finished. He cleans the blood from his knife meticulously on the man’s sheets. He opens the window. He leaves.

The soldier returns to his masters. He is strapped into a metal chair and given a piece of leather to bite down on. And then the pain comes -- terrible, lancing pain through his skull and behind his eyes and in his teeth. The scent of chamomile flickers through him and then it’s gone, leaving a horrible lonely chasm in his chest.

When the pain goes away, he is blank. On the heels of the pain comes the cold, and then he is unconscious. He usually does not dream here, but this time --

The soldier is young and he is sitting in a tiny, sun-drenched apartment. A tiny blond boy is sitting across from him, hands wrapped around a steaming mug. The scent of chamomile hangs lightly in the air around them, and the boy across the table is laughing. He does not know this place or this boy, but as he listens to the boy laugh, a laugh that sounds like it is tripping over itself, fondness swells in his chest. He is warm and full and happy.

And then the memory fades, chipping away to a cold cryofreeze chamber and an ache of loss in the soldier’s chest, loss for something he does not remember.

 

The air bites cold against skin, and the soldier stands, silent and watchful, near a copse of trees. Odessa glitters in the distance. He waits.

A leaf skitters across the road. There’s a cliff some half-mile behind him, and the wind howls bitterly against the exposed rock. A fox screams in the woods behind him, harsh and sudden, but he does not flinch. He just waits.

The car comes then, around the bend, and he crouches, feeling the involuntary rush of adrenaline through his body. He sights down the gun. He fires.

The car, though heavily armored, skids, its tireless metal rims shrieking on the pavement, and then it flips over, skidding further towards the cliff edge. A man staggers out, stumbling, head in hands. He drops to his knees, and the soldier sees the blood in his ears. He takes aim.

A woman, slight and powerful, throws herself in front of the man, her red hair bleached out in the moonlight. She’s pressed flat to him, protecting him, shielding his vitals. The soldier is almost insulted.

It would be easier to kill them both.

But something in the back of his head feels wrong, and he can’t quite identify it, so he takes the more difficult shot -- through the woman, killing his mark, leaving her pale and bloody but without any major organs damaged. She reminds him of someone, small and fierce and goddamn near suicidal, and he can’t bring himself to kill her, so he leaves. She’s sprawled on the pavement, her left hip punctured, her charge dead beside her.

The soldier walks away.

He remembers the coppery smell of blood in an old alley, garbage cans crashing and a small figure defending, “I had him on the ropes, Buck, I swear.”

He clenches his jaw.

 

The soldier remembers little but the cold metal of a chair and a cryofreeze chamber and his lungs filled with frozen liquid. When he remembers, it is on a bridge in Washington D.C., and the man he is trying to kill says “Bucky?” like he’s drowning and the name is a lifeline. The soldier remembers nothing.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he says. The man’s face falls, if only slightly, and the soldier is gone. He has heard that name before, said like a prayer, and he cannot remember. He punches a wall in a fit of frustration, scrabbling for memories that evade him over and over again.

“I knew him,” he repeats, to himself, to Pierce. They put him in the chair again and wipe him, and when he comes out on the other side he knows no one.

He knows only the sensation of pain shuddering through his bones, and for a moment, he is looking up at a train rushing by as he falls from it, his hands grasping for something out of their reach. When he wakes, he is in a cold sweat, and his left arm hurts, metal imitating the aches of flesh.

The soldier’s next mission is Captain America. He looks over the brief and feels something in the back of his head, something a lot like bitter laughter, and lets it be.

When they finally face each other, he is unsurprised to feel so unsettled. He compartmentalizes -- the Captain is nothing right now. The mission is everything. He fights the Captain like everything he knows is about to be lost -- maybe it is. As the Captain squeezes the air from his body, his right arm screaming in pain, something in his mind starts panicking, thinking _it was never meant to be like this_.

He comes to; he stands, right hand dangling uselessly, and shoots the Captain three times. Once the carriers start shooting at each other, things become shattered in his mind -- when he comes back to himself, he is trapped under a heavy support beam. The Captain is coming towards him, bleeding from his leg and chest. The soldier struggles -- this is, surely, his execution. He cannot make himself be afraid.

The Captain does not protest when the soldier hits him, just goes down, lets himself be hit over and over again.

“You’re my _mission,”_ the soldier tells himself, hand fisted in the Captain’s uniform.

“Then finish it,” the Captain says, words soft and slurred from his split lip, “‘cause I’m with you ‘till the end of the line.” The soldier stops -- his memory hurts -- he looks down at the face below him, bruised and battered but so, so familiar, and he recognizes Steve.

And then Steve falls.

The soldier catches himself, holds on by the tips of his fingers, and watches Steve plummet, dead weight, towards the surface of the river.

He lets go, falls himself. The water is cold, shocks all of him, and he forces himself downwards, following the glint of dulled gold. He pulls Steve from the river. The shore is soft, mucky, but it is safe, and he leaves him there -- only surveys his now-familiar face for a moment.

His name is Bucky.

 

He’s constantly moving -- sleeping under bridges, in abandoned buildings, in wooded areas. He doesn’t risk going near people. He visits the Smithsonian, looks at his own face and reads his own story and feels the warm curl of recognition below his sternum.

He gets on a plane. Sneaks into the cargo hold, surrounded by luggage. He only has his backpack, empty but for some stolen HYDRA money, a sleeping bag, and a notebook and pen. He wishes he’d brought water. One of the suitcases he’s leaning on smells faintly of whiskey and he remembers again.

Steve had brought whiskey home with him, bought with money scraped together over a couple of weeks. It’d been cheap whiskey, smelling almost like paint thinner. They drank themselves silly over a meager birthday cake from Mrs. Bates down the hall, its butter icing thin and utterly luxurious. Steve had shoved a wrapped box across the table, full of Bucky’s favorite pastries from the bakery downstairs. They’d shared a danish, tearing it in half and licking their fingers clean of jam and flakes of pastry.

Bucky’s fingers had curled around Steve’s wrist, the skin on the inside warm and soft. He had been able to feel the pulse through the paper-thin skin; he’d swallowed hard and let go. Steve had been blinking slowly, each of his motions slurred by the whiskey.

“Happy birthday, Buck,” Steve had murmured, leaning back against Bucky’s shoulder.

The soldier jerks, mind full of honey-gold hair and languid blue eyes. It’s another memory, another page in his notebook. He writes it down in shaky, rushed shorthand, flips the pages until he lands on a photograph taped into the binding -- a photograph stolen from the basement of the Smithsonian.

He looks over the picture until it’s burned into the back of his eyes, until he can’t blink without seeing Steve’s unguarded expression, happy and watching Bucky laugh, his head bowed.

It is hard to connect himself with the man in the photo. He can barely remember being that kind of happy. He says it out loud, testing it.

“Bucky Barnes,” he says softly, and then says it louder. “Bucky Barnes.” Each time he says it, the name feels better, smoother edges, an easier fit.

The plane touches down with a sharp jolt. Bucky is immediately alert, shoving his notebook into his backpack and rocking to his feet. He slips out of the cargo hold and hits the ground running. His backpack bounces between his shoulderblades with each step, reminding him over and over again of what he is running from.

The building he ends up in is only half full. He brokers a quick, cheap deal with the owner, who lives in a shitty flat on the first floor. The deal is spoken in hasty Romanian, voices hushed, and money changes hands. Bucky makes sure he does not show more of his face than is necessary.

His new apartment is better than the bridges he has been living under. There’s a scummy mattress shoved in the corner, directly beneath a scrawled, spiky “cu ochii pe tine”. There’s little in the way of a kitchen. It’ll do.

The first thing he does is sleep. It’s been years since he really _slept,_ always on alert or, worse, in cryofreeze -- not real sleep at all. So he sleeps, curled on his shitty mattress in his shitty sleeping bag with his backpack under his arm. It’s all he has; the most he’s had for a long time. As he falls asleep, he is very aware of the photograph in his notebook.

He buys more notebooks, more pens, water bottles, fruit. The notebooks vary -- his favorite is a whiskey-colored leather bound one. It reminds him of something, he thinks, but he hasn’t figured out what. He writes in them every time he remembers something different. Sometimes it’s a full memory, sometimes just numbers or words. He reads somewhere that plums improve memory, so he buys as many of them as he can find, eats them as he sits cross-legged on his mattress and reads, usually things he’s picked up from people on the street. There’s only one or two bookshops in his area, but he sure as hell has scoured them for biographies on Captain America.

Reading the biographies helps him remember. There are pictures of Steve before the serum and after it, and he cuts them all out to try and _remember something,_ tapes them carefully into his notebooks.

He reads all about how tragic hero James Buchanan Barnes fell from a train and died, leaving Captain America™ alone in a bombed-out bar, drinking even though he couldn’t get drunk. Bucky’s arm aches.

The shitty apartment in Bucharest is his home for four months. He decides to leave eventually, packing up all of his notebooks and his books, leaving the sleeping bag behind. He sneaks onto another plane -- really, all of these security measures don’t do much -- and sits, feeling the plane’s every shudder, every nerve in his body alert. When the plane lands in New York, he lets his head fall back against the cold metal wall of the cargo hold and waits.

He goes a record of two hours on the streets -- baseball cap low, sweatshirt concealing his arm -- before he’s apprehended by a man and a woman. The man’s wearing shaded glasses and a goatee. The woman’s wearing a leather jacket. They ask him to come with them. They’re polite, but their voices hint at a conflict of interest if he doesn’t. He goes with them.

As they walk, Bucky checks every alley they pass. It’s a reflex -- he did it even on missions, but now he knows what he’s looking for, knows he’d leap to action immediately if he saw that little asshole starting another goddamn fight he couldn’t win.

The man is speaking -- not to anyone in particular, certainly not to Bucky -- just speaking for the sake of hearing his own voice, Bucky thinks. Without the man watching him, Bucky is free to observe him. He knows exactly who this is. He doesn’t just look like his father; he has the same mannerisms, the same untouchable aura of confidence.

Tony Stark turns to Bucky and smiles like a shark.

“You know where we’re going, Barnes?” he asks. Bucky doesn’t answer, just presses his hands deeper into his pockets and looks away from Tony. “Whatever,” says Tony, striding ahead, “you’ll see soon enough.”

Bucky does see, soon enough. It’s hard to miss Stark Tower. They go all the way to the top in an elevator made of glass, and Bucky feels more and more like a mouse in a box as the floors rush by. The woman hasn’t said anything yet, but Bucky knows her. He remembers seeing her red hair bleached out in the light of a full moon. He remembers the absence of noise when his bullet tore through her hip. He almost wants to apologize.

The elevator stops. The doors slide open. Tony walks forward, arms outstretched, that sharklike smile still curved across his face.

“Mi casa,” he says expansively. Bucky wishes he wouldn’t. Tony gestures at the couch and Bucky sits cautiously. He’s still wearing his backpack, carrying everything he owns with him. Tony sits across from him, eyebrows knitted. The woman glances at the two of them and leaves, climbing a spiral staircase up to the next level. “Su casa, if you’re interested,” Tony says.

“What,” says Bucky.

“You can live here, if you need a place.” Tony stands again, then sits like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “It’s weird, I know. Don’t even know you. But Cap trusts you, and I trust him.”

“How did you know I was here?” Bucky asks. Tony shrugs.

“You’ll have to share a floor with Cap, if you’re alright with that,” he says. Bucky doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say now. “It’s just. Safer, I guess. To keep everyone together.” Bucky hesitates. He nods.

He needs a place to stay. If nothing else.

 

The first time he’d slept next to Steve had been when he was eight. The last time was the night before the train. In between were thousands of nights curled up on a narrow mattress, Steve’s thin wrist always, _always_ circled by Bucky’s fingers.

The worst night had been when Steve was eighteen. His mother’d died by then, and they were both alone in their tiny apartment, and Steve got sick.

Not sick like he’d been before -- real sick, coughing so hard Bucky was afraid his fragile body would shake apart. Bucky stayed with him, not on the bed but next to it, holding Steve’s fever-hot hands with his own, making him drink water. There had been clouds over the whole sky, blocking out any sort of light. Around one in the morning, Steve had gone still and quiet. He’d blinked a couple of times and then turned to Bucky.

“I can see the angels, Buck,” he’d whispered. His voice was wrecked from all the coughing. Bucky had squeezed his hand and then he _ran,_ faster than he’d ever run before, to get the priest living down by the docks, the closest one to them. The priest had performed the last rites over Steve as he lay there, fighting to breathe, and Bucky had prayed with everything he had.

_Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per (visum, audtiotum, odorátum, gustum et locutiónem, tactum, gressum deliquisti.)_

Bucky shakes his head. He’s living with Steve again but it’s different now -- he mostly stays in his own room. He’s seen Steve maybe twice since Tony gave him a key to the apartment and both times Steve’s had this look on his face, this open sadness.

It’s a while before they speak, on a Saturday morning when Steve’s reading on the couch and Bucky’s standing in the kitchen, holding a plum. Old habits die hard, he guesses.

“Do you still draw?” he asks into the sun-drenched silence. Steve startles slightly, closes his book. He stands, and Bucky still isn’t quite used to how tall he is now.

“Not a lot. Probably should, though,” Steve says, vaguely sheepish. When they’d been growing up, drawing was Steve’s favorite thing. He’d been good at it, too. Bucky nods. He doesn’t know how to keep talking. Steve clears his throat, and then speaks again. “They found some of your stuff, I think. When they raided HYDRA’s base in Russia. It’s, uh. It’s in a box in the other room, if you want it.”

“Sure,” Bucky says.

The box doesn’t have a lot in it. Just the coat he’d been wearing when he fell, the arm torn open and soaked through with blood. His dog tags are curled on the bottom, tarnished and dull after so many years of rest. There’s a metal cigarette case too, which he doesn’t open. He’s never smoked, doesn’t quite remember why he would have had it with him. There’s a pad of butcher’s paper -- he remembers it was a good firestarter. He only takes the dog tags and the cigarette case. He leaves the dog tags on the counter, with a note for Steve -- _they’re yours_.

The next time he sees Steve, there’s a tarnished silver chain around his neck. Bucky’s chest aches.

 

“Do you regret doing it?” Bucky asks once. Steve shakes his head, slicing into a bell pepper. Bucky thinks he’s making an omelet.

“When I woke up and they told me I’d been asleep for seventy years, there was nothing worse than the idea that I was in a place you would never be,” he says. His hands work automatically; Bucky watches him, watches the dull silver chain reflect light. “It was the same then. Fifty-fifty chance it worked, and with you overseas and maybe never coming home I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.”

“That’s stupid,” Bucky says without really meaning to. Steve looks up sharply. “I would’ve come home. I told you I would.” He doesn’t remember, but he knows he wouldn’t lie to Steve.

When Steve speaks again, it’s got an edge of iron running through it. “I didn’t do it because I wanted to be stronger. I did it because I wanted to help, Buck.” Suddenly Bucky sees him, almost a foot shorter and at least a hundred pounds smaller, jaw set and narrow shoulders squared. They’d had a version of this argument before.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He wishes he remembered more. He dreads remembering the things in between.

 

Bucky meets Sam Wilson on a cloudy Wednesday. Sam is bringing by a box of danishes from downtown for Steve. Bucky thinks absently _it was always me who liked danishes more._ He doesn’t know if Steve remembers that.

Sam Wilson puts the box of danishes on the counter and holds out his hand, so Bucky shakes it.

“You’re Bucky Barnes, I guess,” he says, smiling. Bucky knows this is just a formality -- Sam Wilson has known who he is for months, but the fact that he’s kind enough to introduce himself warms Bucky to him. “Do you remember Steve being as much of a dumbass as he is now?” Sam asks, leaning on the counter. Bucky sits in one of the chairs against it and cracks a smile.

“He was even dumber before he got big,” Bucky says. Sam grins.

“No way, man,” he says disbelievingly. By the time Steve gets home, Bucky and Sam are on the couch, trading stories.

“-- ended up patrolling our neighborhood, looking down every goddamn alley just in case Steve’d gotten himself into some kinda trouble and couldn’t hit back,” Bucky says. He’s got a glass of apple juice. Sam’s laughing, and Bucky’s laughing too, and when Steve comes in, all American Hero, it makes them laugh harder. It’s a good day.

Sam stays for dinner. He cooks, because as much as Steve tries, he’s pretty miserable at it. Sam makes Indian butter chicken with rice. It’s delicious and so very spicy, and Bucky relishes the searing heat of it as he eats -- it’s so different to the chill that rests within his bones.

Steve and Sam have a lively debate over their food over what movie to watch after dinner. Bucky doesn’t really care, just watches Steve argue with Sam, his eyes bright and laughter in his face.

Bucky’s aware that he isn’t as fucked up as he should be. He knows from the books he read in his shitty apartment in Bucharest that veterans usually come out the other side rougher, with only PTSD if they’re lucky, and worse if they’re not. He knows that, considering the shit HYDRA did to him and made him do, he should be extra fucked up. But he’s not, and he thinks he knows why.

The winter of 1935 had been the coldest Bucky could remember. The apartment hadn’t been warm enough, even with piles of blankets covering him and Steve, curled together on the tiny bed. Their breath froze; their fingers stiffened from the cold, turning white; Steve’s lips were always blue. Bucky worried sick about him while he was at work, and he’d always rushed home to make sure Steve hadn’t frozen. Steve always rolled his eyes and informed Bucky through chattering teeth that he was _not_ a damsel in distress and he was perfectly capable of _staying alive_ for eight hours while Bucky was out.

Once Bucky came home, his greeting echoing in the silent apartment, and immediately run to the bed, where Steve had been lying silently, eyes closed and lavender-shaded against the rest of his skin, which had been too pale, even for him.

“Steve, wake up,” Bucky’d said, quiet and panicked, pressing his ice-cold fingers to Steve’s throat, searching for a pulse, praying --

_Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per (visum, audtiotum, odorátum, gustum et locutiónem, tactum, gressum deliquisti.)_

“Bucky, what the hell,” Steve had said, sitting straight up and knocking Bucky’s hand from his neck. “I was _asleep.”_ Bucky had let out all the breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

“Christ, Steve, you looked dead.” Bucky’s head hurt.

“Buck?” Bucky doesn’t know who’s spoken to him until he blinks, hard, and looks up -- he’s not in Brooklyn in 1935, he’s in Manhattan and it’s 2016 and Steve is looking at him across their dinner with concern in his eyes. “You okay?”

“Do you remember the time you almost froze?” he asks instead of answering Steve’s question. Steve thinks for a second (Bucky can tell; he does the same thing he used to where, when in deep thought, he crinkles his nose) and then his face clears.

“I didn’t almost _freeze,_ I was taking a _nap,”_ he says defensively, and Sam’s eyebrows shoot almost to his hairline.

“What,” Sam says.

“December of 1935 was really bad,” Steve tells Sam. Bucky snorts. “It was freezing most of the time. Bucky was working, and I couldn’t do anything ‘cause of my asthma, so I stayed home and read, or drew. For some reason Bucky got this idea that I was gonna freeze --”

“You almost _did,”_ Bucky interjects.

“-- and he came home one time and I was asleep and he almost had a heart attack,” Steve finishes. Sam barks a laugh.

“He was completely white,” Bucky says. “Actually half dead.” Steve rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning, and something clicks for Bucky.

He’s been protecting Steve since they could walk. When he got shipped off to Europe, his first and last thoughts every day were that he was here, in this hellish, bleached-out nightmare, fighting so that tiny, skinny, beautiful Steve wouldn’t have to. When he was captured by HYDRA, strapped to that table and experimented on, he was just grateful that Steve didn’t know he was missing, didn’t know he was going to die in a goddamn Nazi camp with needles in his arm. And then when Steve had arrived with a new body, with the same stubborn set to his jaw, Bucky had cursed his inability to protect Steve from this new threat, this Red Skull, had clung to a railing and screamed _no, not without you,_ and Steve had leapt.

_Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per (visum, audtiotum, odorátum, gustum et locutiónem, tactum, gressum deliquisti.)_

Since he can remember, he’s been protecting Steve Rogers.

And then, all of a sudden, he _remembers._

He remembers a conviction stronger than any mission HYDRA gave him, a burning need to protect. He remembers a tripping laugh and the scent of chamomile and the darkness of alleyways uninhabited. He remembers the feeling of thin, cold fingers wrapping around his own, and he knows.

Bucky remembers loving Steve.

 

It’s a slow, quiet Thursday when Steve finds the cigarette case.

Bucky had left it on a side table earlier -- it’s rusted shut, and he can’t really open it, so it’s become a habit just to play with the latch while he’s watching a movie or reading. Steve’s noticed, of course, and Bucky’s noticed Steve notice, but neither of them have ever brought it up.

But on a lazy Thursday, Steve accidentally knocks the thing off a side table, and it makes a hollow clanging sound and pops open.

“Buck?” Steve calls from the living room. Bucky puts down his book. The sky outside his window is dark and looks like it’s about to break open.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning on the doorway to his room.

“Did you, uh. Is this that self-portrait I drew like seventy years ago?” Steve asks, holding up a softened, yellowed piece of paper. Bucky takes it, turns it over. It’s brittle and the charcoal is faded, but it’s definitely Steve.

“I guess,” says Bucky. He holds the piece of paper in his hand, rubbing his fingers absently over the soft frayed edge.

“You kept that?” Steve says disbelievingly. “I thought you were joking, I thought you’d throw it away.” Bucky snorts. His arm aches.

“I didn’t have a picture, like hell I was gonna throw that away,” Bucky says. He wants to stop looking at the drawing. He wants Steve to look away from his hand, which is still curled protectively around the paper. He wants to not remember why he put it away in his jacket; he wants more than anything to forget the logic behind _if someone finds me, please God let them know to tell Steve_.

“Buck, I -- you gotta tell me if I’m wrong, promise me you’ll tell me,” Steve says suddenly, and Bucky nods, startled. Steve breathes deeply, clenches his fists, and then --

And then he’s kissing Bucky, his left hand coming up to rest on Bucky’s neck. Bucky freezes, hands hovering in midair. Steve tastes like fruit and some ghostly memory of chamomile. He’s warm and solid against Bucky, right hand on Bucky’s waist.

He pulls back, disappointment written in every line of his face, but he tries to hide it as he moves away from Bucky.

Bucky makes a frustrated noise. “No, hold on, you _idiot,”_ he mutters, reaching out and catching Steve’s hand, pulling him back. He kisses Steve again, and Steve makes a startled sound.

The sound of rain begins on the tower. Bucky can only think about the press of Steve’s mouth against his own. Steve’s hands come to rest on the small of Bucky’s back, and they are so close together it feels like they could be one person.

Bucky pulls back first, resting his forehead against Steve’s and his mind racing.

“We never did that, did we,” he says rhetorically. Steve shakes his head, catching his breath.

“We never did that,” Steve confirms, half-laughing. Bucky closes his eyes. He breathes in the scent of New York in a rainstorm floating in through the window, so unlike the clean wet pavement smell of their childhood, and he could stay here forever.

 

Bucky hates his arm. It’s too alien, feels strange against his skin. Steve absently runs his fingers over the seam of flesh and metal sometimes, which gives Bucky a strange feeling in the back of his throat. It aches a lot of the time.

“Your arm is beautiful, Buck,” Steve assures him, but he can’t seem to stop thinking about all the people it’s killed, the pain and suffering and horror it’s wrought. He can’t look at it. Every time Steve touches it, the synthetic nerves beneath the metal twinge and Bucky almost wants to vomit, the bitter taste of lost decades sharp on his tongue.

The rain hasn’t stopped for days. Bucky spends a lot of time curled up on the couch, wrapped in blankets and watching movies, trying not to look at his arm. Steve watches with him sometimes.

There are good days and there are bad days. On the bad days, Bucky can see Steve’s heartbroken expression before he masks it behind a smile. On the good days, Bucky smiles when Steve says things he remembers, kisses Steve softly and knots the fingers of his right hand into Steve’s hair, soft and honey-colored and so, so familiar.

On one of the bad days, Steve comes home with a paper bag from the art store. Bucky’s on the couch, the left sleeve of his oversized t-shirt pulled over his hand, concealing the metal. He can feel the bags under his eyes. It feels like there’s lead in his bones, pulling him downwards.

“How’re you doin’, Buck?” asks Steve, putting the bag on the coffee table and sitting down next to Bucky.

“It’s getting better,” Bucky says simply, leaning his head on the back of the couch. There’s rain clinging to the windows; Bucky can feel it in the back of his throat. He feels a buzzing anxiety behind his sternum, a background nausea that surges every time he thinks about the fact that he is connected to his arm and he can’t do anything about it.

When he looks back over at Steve, there’s colorful packaging all over the coffee table. Steve’s holding a flat-tipped paintbrush and there’s a box of washable paint tubes open in his lap.

“D’you mind?” Steve asks carefully, reaching forward to twitch up Bucky’s sleeve, letting the metal show. Bucky’s stomach jolts. He shrugs, looking back toward the TV, ignoring the cold feeling of Steve’s brush on his arm.

He’s trying hard not to think about Steve touching the arm that has murdered so many people; trying not to think about the arm going rogue and killing _Steve --_ he doesn’t know what the arm is capable of, can only ever feel it at his side, a deadly weapon waiting to explode. He sets his jaw and stares resolutely at the TV.

Steve’s hands are warm and sure, tracing paint across years of fear and chill and aching. He hums tunelessly as he paints, occasionally making small frustrated noises when he goes outside a line or drops his brush. Bucky closes his eyes and listens to the rain beat on the tower.

“Done,” says Steve eventually, sitting back. Bucky opens his eyes and looks down at his arm -- Steve’s left swirls of blue and yellow and white and black all down it --

“It’s that van Gogh,” Bucky says, looking up at Steve.

“Yeah,” says Steve, a smudge of blue paint on his nose, “you always liked it, so I figured. Might as well, you know.” Bucky smiles and kisses Steve, and his arm doesn’t feel quite so alien anymore.

Bucky is warm and full and happy, and he loves Steve Rogers.


End file.
